Helena swept in with a swirl of impatient skirts. "Good heavens!" she cried. "What ails you, Jackie? We knocked half a dozen times. Were you—?"
Her glance encountering Joan, the words dried on her lips.
Tankerville, at her heels, jerked a motor gauntlet from his fat hand in order to grasp that of Matthias. "Surprised you—eh?" he chuckled—"getting in so late. Well, it's all accidental. We were bound home—been visiting the Hastings for a week, you know—but the car broke down just this side of Poughkeepsie and delayed us and...."
He became distressfully aware of his wife's silence, simultaneously ascertained the cause of it, and cut his speech short in full stride.
Matthias laughed a little, quietly: no good trying to carry off this situation; by many a clue aside from Joan's confusion, they were betrayed.
"You've caught us," he said cheerfully. "We may as well own up. Helena, this is Joan—Miss Thursday—my fiancée. And Joan, this is my aunt, Mrs. Tankerville—and her husband."
And immediately he was conscious of the necessity of bridging the pause that would inevitably hold these three confounded, pending adjustment to his amazing announcement.
"We had intended to keep it quiet for a while," he pursued evenly, shutting the door.... "Helena, let me help you with that cloak.... But since you've declared yourselves in, we can only ask you to hold your peace until we're ready. I'm sure we can count on you both."
Tankerville puffed an explosive: "Oh—certainly!"
Helena glanced shrewdly from Joan to Matthias. He smiled his confidence in her, knowing that he might count upon her doing the right thing to put the girl at ease—just shoulders of the girl as positively as he might count upon her violent opposition to the match as soon as she discovered that he had engaged himself to her pet abomination, a woman of the stage.